Version: (using KDE KDE 3.2.2) Installed from: Compiled From Sources OS: Linux Creating a KIO Slave that searches for URL's in other KIO Slaves would be a really powerful thing to have. For example suppose you are in a KFileDialog to select a file, but you can't find it. With this KIO, you can quickly find it by entering search:/ Stairway to Heaven -mime:mp3 into the location bar. Pressing ENTER will start a search for MP3 files that match the keywords and the results will be displayed like any filesystem. Each element in the results has a URL associated with it, which can be returned to the application that called the KFileDialog. The real challenge about this is to define the right syntax for submitting search queries. There has been a lengthly discussion about this, about the speed issue, search plugins other search improvements on the KDE Usability mailing list: http://lists.kde.org/?t=108528838700001&r=1&w=2 During the discussioon, it was suggested to use a Google-like syntax, because anyone knows how to use Google nowadays.
There is already one kio slave that searches files by using the slocate database. It can be used to quickly find files from any URL input field in KDE: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17201 There are two things that this kio slave does not have: * It can not search in other kio slaves, like ftp, fish. * You need to explicitely invoke it by typing "locate: ..." In stead, this kio slave should be invoked automatically whenever the user types a URL that does not make sense. When the user types "desktop" in any URL input field, it should start a search that contains "/home/user/Desktop" as one of the results.
The GNOME project has a find-as-you-type that is *really* quite amazing. It's called "Beagle" and it will find anything, not just files as the 'locate' KIO Slave does. It also finds documents on the internet and can even search on D-BUS... Demo's are here: http://nat.org/demos/ Maybe the GNOME guys could share this little gem with KDE...
the filenamesearch:/ ioslave does this.